MANY OF US learned the words as children and grew
up with them. They are lovely words with a comforting sound, words that seem
to promise much and to exact little. How easily they roll off our tongues!
As if we were saying, "If you are very polite, you will have an extra slice
of cake with your ice cream," or, "If you get to work punctually at eight
each morning, you will probably marry the boss's daughter and be taken into
partnership."

When we examine our Beatitude more carefully, however,
we begin to make important discoveries. We find that the words do not mean
at all what we have supposed them to mean. When we study them in the light
of the One who spoke them, it becomes evident that we cannot divorce the
teachings of Jesus Christ from His

Page 2

life. What He is actually doing is sending up a rocket in this
verse to signal the direction to the Cross of Calvary. In doing so He is
laying down a basic principle of the Kingdom of God.

What is poverty of spirit? Jesus does not in any sense
suggest (for all the insinuations of such critics as Celsus and Nietzsche)
that weakness is preferable to manliness. To be poor in spirit is not contrary
to being high-spirited; rather it is the opposite of spiritual pride. Poverty
of spirit means that the ground of our self-sufficiency has been removed
from under us. It means that our resiliency is gone, that we have given up
assuming that "everything is going to turn out all right." It is the cry
of dereliction from the Cross: "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"
It is the bitter sobbing of Mary in the garden. It is the heart upon its
knees.

Jesus is telling us something we very much need to
know: that there is no need for us to try to "save face" before God. In the
things of the Spirit it is important to be honest and frank. One of the hardest
things our Lord had to bear was the criticisms of those who were making capital
of their churchmanship. Such persons desired their piety to be "seen of men."
There is no pride like spiritual pride. No matter how great our evangelistic
zeal or how arduous our labors in the church kitchen, we may claim no heavenly
trophies for our attainments. As Christians we are aware that even these
duties may develop into tumors to draw off the divine life seeking to flow
into us; that the only spiritual progress really

Page 3

possible for us is toward the Cross, and that is toward spiritual
poverty.

The secret of the Gospel's power is that it alone
can deal adequately with the whole matter of pride and humility. It exposes
the falsity of those who pretend to be spiritually rich. At the same time
it undercuts the false humbleness of those who, like Dickens' famous Uriah
Heep, use their obsequiousness as a vehicle to foster their pride. Christian
humility is not merely modesty; it is the stark humiliation of
Golgotha.

The more we concentrate our gaze on the Cross, the
more clearly this Beatitude speaks to us. The way of the Cross is not a velvet
carpet for a prince of the Church, nor is it a Via Appia for the triumphant
conqueror. It is a poor way, an unfriendly and deserted way, soiled with
blood, sweat, and tears. It is a way that breaks down even a man's spiritual
vitality, and leaves him at the end of his tether. It leads not to
self-realization but to self-sacrifice; to the wolves and the Roman execution
squad. To walk this way is not to be filled with the Spirit but to be emptied
by the Spirit.

When we have reached that crucifixion point
 call
it high or low
 when
we recognize that we are unprofitable servants, the divine blessing is released.
How else could God work? He cannot fill our cups with the Water of Life until
they have been drained of all other waters. That is why the blessed ones
are those who are poor in spirit. It is their poverty, their insolvency,
that gives them the capacity for taking on treasure. Who enjoys

Page 4

a meal when his stomach is already filled? "The righteous have
no need of a physician." Until a man's hands are empty he cannot reach for
the hand of God. There is only one way to the resurrection and that is by
way of the Cross.

A day of penitence and sober reflection, therefore,
could be the equinox of God's springtime in our lives. It was as he sat in
dust and ashes that Job saw the Lord. What Christ is teaching us is more
than a "principle of the Kingdom," it is the secret of life
itself.

* * * * * *
*

As soon as we seek to apply the principle in our daily
walk, it becomes apparent that our first need to be "poor in spirit" is not
in our relations with each other but
 surprisingly enough 
in our prayer life. All men are children of their times, and while we
twentieth-century people are more conscious of the sin and tragedy of life,
perhaps, than our forebears were, we are not aware of how our era is debasing
prayer. Prayer has become a weapon in the cold war. It has become a slide
rule for financial investments. It has been invoked to avoid medical expenses
and to heighten luxury. It has been made into an escape hatch for thwarted
ambition. Many people have callously and blasphemously tried to manipulate
God through prayer. They have sought to make a "science" of prayer, comparing
it with electricity, speculating upon its "wave lengths" and "vibrations"
and treating the Holy Spirit as if He were a kind of space-station
transmitter.

Page 5

Perhaps it is natural that in
a century of exploitation and propaganda there is danger of prayer becoming
a racket. Just as scientists have launched their fabricated moons in an effort
to gain a purchase on space, so "religious" people are exporting prayer into
the unknown in the hope of obtaining a favorable trade balance with Something
Out There. More than one Organization Man, impressed by the boom in religion,
has sought greater efficiency for his business by inviting God to sit with
his board of directors.

The question seems not to be,
"What is God like?" or "How may I seek His face?" but simply, "How can I
control Him?" Thus in addition to providing an inexpensive psychiatry, prayer
becomes modern man's technique for outfoxing the hounds of his own materialism,
and his insurance program against the wrath of God.

The Beatitude changes all this.
It makes clear that our prayers are to begin neither with wishing nor with
scheming. True prayer begins with nothing. "A broken and contrite heart,
O God, thou wilt not despise" (Psalm 51:17). It begins in Gethsemane with
the words of Jesus, "Nevertheless, not my will, but thine." A missionary
tells of visiting an Indian woman in the last stages of cholera. Her body
was wasted and her breathing was labored, and he had only a few minutes.
With great effort he taught her to repeat in the darkened room the beginning
of the Twenty-third Psalm,
"TheLordismyshepherdIshallnotwant."
That is the beginning of prayer!

The very thought of trying to
manipulate God is

Page 6

profane, and should strike terror into the
honest believer. Here surely it is true that the fear of the Lord is the
beginning of wisdom. Such "praying" is always childish and self-answering,
but it can be outgrown. The moment we give over our immature efforts to use
the Almighty for our own ends, and begin to yearn for Him for His own sake,
our boldness returns. When a man lifts up empty hands to God they become
holy hands.

Because we spend so little actual
time in prayer, we are tempted to look at it as a professional skill rather
than simply a conversation with God. We even think it is performed at its
best by professionals in proper garb. A corrective is needed here. Ezekiel
once had a vision of wheels, but his wheels were not the leaders of the Church.
Prayer is not ecclesiastical politicking. Today, as in the days of Moses,
the mighty man of God may be a Church leader and he may not, but it is certain
that if his prayer has prevailing power he is not a spiritual giant, he is
a spiritual dwarf. He is the poor in spirit. Like Peter, he is "broke" 
"silver and gold have I none"  that is, he is broken. As God cuts him
down to grasshopper size, or to worm size, he discovers just how valuable
are all his programs of pious affiliation.

Again, so many of us have come
to feel that prayer, like the Christian life, is a moving passenger train
that we ought to be aboard. We run and try to jump on, but through ineptness
we fail to make the step. As in a nightmare we see that our efforts to cling
are in vain, and we lose our grip. One by one we watch the cars pass us by.
Other people find Jesus Christ, learn to pray, find
victory

Page 7

in their lives, acquire a testimony, and
move on, but we remain mute.

The prayers of others frequently
frighten us, they are so artistically and fervently expressed; they fairly
radiate joy and assurance. We become quite discouraged. Yet the one prayer
that Jesus Christ honored above all others was the wail of a thieving tax
collector: "God be merciful to me, a sinner." As Charles Spurgeon remarked
from his London pulpit, "This publican had the soundest theology of any man
in all England." He described himself as a sinner, and in the world of the
Spirit what is a sinner? He is nothing. The New Testament was written not
by men of spirit but by the Holy Spirit of God moving in men of
nothing.

* * * * * *
*

There are thousands of us who
are able to discourse seemingly upon any subject, like the television experts,
but at the moment of spoken prayer our jaws are frozen shut. Why? Is it because
our sins rise up and condemn us? Is it because, after all, we do not really
believe? Why do God's people become inarticulate and feel they cannot call
upon Him? One of the commonest apologies, of course, is that one has not
"come that far yet," one has not "moved along spiritually to the point" of
prayer, one has not acquired sufficient skills to verbalize
prayer.

Does prayer then require some
sort of expertise? How much training is needed for a man to say, "Thank you,
Lord!" or "Abba, Father," or "God be merciful to me, a sinner"? The Cross
certainly does not suggest

Page 8

that God requires polish and finesse from
the men who approach Him. Humanly speaking, the crucifixion of Jesus Christ
was the worst bungle in history, yet it accomplished our salvation. To pray
we simply need to open our mouths and begin a
conversation.

A spoken prayer is the
fastest-working therapy in the world because it is the most natural. It reveals
every man at his truest and best, because in real prayer every man checks
in at zero on the register. He comes not trusting in himself but asking for
help. I have never known a stammerer to stammer when he was talking intimately
to God. In counseling with people I usually endeavor to get them to pray
aloud: nothing else tells me so clearly whether their problems have a
solution.

Recently I talked with a lady
whose hair had turned white at forty, who had stopped working and was fearful
that she was losing her mind. There were some superficial signs of neurosis,
but when she prayed with me her prayer was utterly lucid and rational, and
pointed in the direction she wanted to go  to wholeness. It did
not take much insight to conclude that she was spiritually sound. Within
a few weeks she had talked and prayed her way through her fear symptoms and
had gone back to work.

Many people object to verbalized
prayer because it makes them feel self-conscious, as if there were really
"nothing there" and they were talking to themselves like mutterers on the
street. The truth is that in prayer it is impossible to talk to oneself.
Frank Laubach tells of a young man who remarked to him archly that
prayer

Page 9

was nothing more than mere autosuggestion.
Dr. Laubach replied, "My boy, God can use autosuggestion." A West Coast minister,
Robert Boyd Munger, has challenged anyone to pray fervently to Jesus Christ
for five consecutive minutes  aloud  without finding his life
dynamically redirected.

Our prayers start where we are,
in poverty of spirit. If we continue to wait and our prayers seem to others
to grow richer in spirituality, it can only mean one thing: that we are really
becoming poorer in spirit as God proceeds with His pruning and stripping.
The way of the Cross is the way to God, but it is not a way up, it is a way
down.

The men of the Bible were keenly
aware of their spiritual meanness. Their prayers are characterized not by
demands but by self-emptyings. Listen to this prayer of Hezekiah the king
in the days of Isaiah: "I said, I shall not see the Lord, even the Lord,
in the land of the living . . . Like a crane or a swallow, so did I chatter:
I did mourn as a dove: mine eyes fail with looking upward: O Lord, I am
oppressed; undertake for me" (Isaiah 38:11,14).

Out of his desperation Hezekiah
received an answer, and his rejoicing is still contagious after twenty-seven
centuries: "What shall I say? He hath both spoken unto me, and himself hath
done it . . . O Lord, by these things men live . . . The living, the living,
he shall praise thee, as I do this day . . ." (Isaiah
38:15-16,19).

The prayers of the early apostles
had the same characteristic note. "We know not what we should pray
for

Page 10

as we ought," says Paul, "but the Spirit
[himself] maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered"
(Romans 8:26). Instead of being "mighty men of prayer," the apostles were
"unmighty men of not-prayer," yet God gave them both prayer and power in
the midst of their poverty.

* * * * * *
*

There is a sense in which we
can find the whole Bible a commentary on this Beatitude. From peak to peak,
from Mount Moriah where Abraham prepared to sacrifice Isaac, to Mount Calvary
where Jesus of Nazareth endured the humiliation of a Roman gallows, the cry
is echoed: "The poor in spirit shall enter the kingdom!"

Abraham went to God with absolutely
nothing; he walked out of his Father's house "not knowing whither," not even
knowing who had called him. Thus was he rendered fit for the Lord's
summons.

Moses was probably the most
unpromising prospect for leadership that a people ever had, yet he goes down
in history as one of the greatest. He had an Egyptian name, a speech impediment,
a weak set of knees, an ugly disposition, a criminal record, and a price
on his head; he was despised by Hebrew and Egyptian alike. His life was bankrupt,
and because of that, God could use him.

I am fond of the story of David
in the cave of Adullam. It is a perfect illustration of what Jesus was talking
about. David was being hunted down like an animal by the king's troopers.
He was hiding in the meanest hole in a primitive and poverty-stricken land,
and his crew

Page 11

matched the environment. "Everyone that was
in distress, and everyone that was in debt, and everyone that was discontented,
gathered themselves unto him; and he became a captain over them." (1 Samuel
22:2) They had nothing to lose, and were ready for anything  even
for God. That meant God could do something with them, and He did. He met
David with blessing upon blessing, even to the royal scepter. The dispirited
became the vehicle of the Holy Spirit.

There are other fascinating
illustrations of the Beatitude in Scripture. The widow of Zarephath welcomed
Elijah into her home when the household was on the verge of starvation. "I
have not a cake," she said, "but a handful of meal in a barrel, and little
oil in a cruse: and . . . I am gathering two sticks, that I may go in and
dress it for me and my son, that we may eat it, and die" (1 Kings 17:12).
The prophet Elijah might have been discouraged by this lack of provender,
since the Lord had told him that the widow would "sustain" him. Instead,
Elijah found that it was the lack that set up conditions so that God
could act. He told her to prepare what she had, and the Lord would take care
of the rest  which He did. The cruse of oil became a cup running over,
a symbol of divine blessing. Centuries later Jesus Christ added a footnote
to this story. He pointed out that the woman of Zarephath was not even one
of "God's people," as the Israelites called themselves.

Mary, the mother of Jesus, seems
to have been a wisp of a Galilean peasant girl about whom very little is
known. If she had noble character and distinguished ancestry, she did
not

Page 12

trade on it. She speaks of herself as the
"handmaiden of the Lord" of "low degree" and "low estate." Luther suggests
that if God had wanted human nobility and honor for His Son, He could have
chosen Caiaphas' daughter to bear Him. Instead, God found that Mary's qualities
 or lack of qualities  were eminently usable. Experts may differ
on how Mary might have scored in a modern intelligence or personality test,
but this is sure: in the test of spirit the Lord seeks out the low score,
and Mary qualified.

Jesus in effect illustrates
the Beatitude in parable after parable: the beggars are called in and banqueted
after the guests fail to make their appearance; the young prodigal sinks
to the status of the swineherd and even of the swine. When he has nothing,
he remembers his father's house. The story of the rich young ruler makes
us see that it is not enough even to know the commandments and the catechism.
The young man turns away from Jesus sorrowfully, for without a broken spirit
he cannot follow.

The most remarkable thing about
Pentecost was not that the early apostles were all "of one accord" or that
they spoke in many languages. The most remarkable thing was their poverty
of spirit  they were empty, so they could be
filled.

The Apostle Paul drives home
the point in a hundred ways. He tells how the Savior of men "made himself
of no reputation" for our sakes. How those words cut across our pride! Think
of the infinite pains we take to erect our own reputations. Our character
is our masterpiece,

Page 13

representing a lifetime effort to lay claim
to honor among men. Yet Jesus (as Paul says) took the form of a slave, and
humbled Himself, and became obedient unto death (Philippians 2:7-8). As for
Paul, there are many who consider him the second greatest man who ever lived.
Certainly he traveled to spiritual high places that leave the rest of us
earthbound. Yet near the close of his life he wrote a very simple epitaph
for himself. It was: "The Chief of Sinners."

* * * * *
* *

Goodspeed translates this Beatitude,
"Blessed are they who feel their spiritual need." There is not one of us
who will not face at some time the gap between what he is and what he ought
to be as a Christian. It is good to learn at the beginning, therefore, to
accept ourselves not as we ought to be but as we really are, because at the
Cross we find God accepting us in our misery and poverty. We are prepared
for the "exchanged life" that Hudson Taylor speaks of, as God takes away
even our rags that He might clothe us in the glorious raiment of His
righteousness.

In answer to our prayer the
message of this Beatitude comes as a gift of hope: our heavenly Father takes
us as we are, with all of our lack and shortcoming. The only requirement
He makes is that we come with an empty vessel. And here is the promise: that
men's extremity is God's opportunity, and that our place of despair shall
become the scene of Christ's atoning victory.

Thomas Hooker was a beloved
Puritan preacher who is honored

Page 14

in New England today as the father of
constitutional liberty. As he lay dying in Hartford, the members of his flock
gathered around him and sought to comfort him. "Brother Thomas," they said,
"yours has been a life of great achievement and piety; now you go to claim
your reward." Hooker retorted, "I go to claim mercy."

No pretense, no contrived "front"
will do before God, who treats all "fronts" as whited sepulchres, and checks
every man's luggage before the final journey. Thus the paradox: the spiritually
rich are the spiritually empty. How easy it is to say, and how difficult
to learn! So much in modern life seems to teach the exact
opposite.

For example, in suburban America
today there is a strong drift to the churches on the part of young married
couples. Are they being drawn by a deep hunger, a sense of spiritual need
or a conviction of their sinful state? A revealing survey was made by William
H. Whyte, Jr., in this connection.1 In one suburban
community Mr. Whyte found that the residents considered their churches to
be "prestige groups" where social values were to be gained by being included.
Salvation seems to have been the last thing in anyone's mind. People joined
the house of God for friendship, stability, and "belongingness." What factors
made them choose one church rather than another? Here they are in order of
importance: first, the minister; second, the Sunday school;
third, the location; fourth, the denomination; and
fifth, the music. Somewhere in the mechanics of motivation the Gospel
was overlooked.

Page 15

Mr. Whyte does not comment on
the results of his door-to-door findings. He does not have to. His statistics
reveal all too clearly that there is an "infinite qualitative difference"
between signing the roll of a local church and entering into the Kingdom
of Heaven. Yet Jesus Christ exacts the same requirements in suburbia that
he does anywhere: poverty of spirit. The survey only highlights the Beatitude.
Christ died for those in the tracts as He died for those across the tracks.
All are leveled at the Cross and there is no difference. The only kind of
prestige that counts with God is that which is sealed by the blood of His
Son. The only social value He honors is our love for each other, which is
His love shining through.

Here then is our Lord's meaning:
the spiritually rich are the spiritually empty. "That which thou sowest is
not quickened, except it die" (1 Corinthians 15:36). But when God finds that
at last the road has been cleared of debris and obstruction, He comes in
with power.

So we see that our pilgrimage
will be a different kind of journey from any we have ever taken. In science
and in education we proceed with experimental faith from the known to the
unknown, but to walk into the land of blessing we must forget even what we
"know." Only in the spiritual world must the Pharisee leave his post of
attainment, beat his breast alongside the publican, and declare that he possesses
nothing of his own. Only in personal encounter with Jesus Christ do we surrender
everything and declare our way to have been the way of failure, that it may
become the way to the Cross.

Page 16

It is when we let go of the
rope that we discover that underneath are the everlasting arms. It is when
we have no spirit at all that we receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. "We
have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may
be of God, and not of us" (2 Corinthians 4:7).